Friday 11 March 2011

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J Summary (24M6D) - Finally Self-Feeding!!!


Self-feeding

Daddy was sick on 9 March, and could not join us for dinner. So it was just J and I having dinner together, and I had a chance to just focus on him (normally during dinner time, our house rule is we focus on each other, and J simply joins in).

This evening, I was very determined to encourage J to self-feed. I have already prepared the bowl of takeaway pasta from the supermarket (i was too busy with planning for Montessori program this week, that I hardly cooked) and a toddler fork on the side. J (24M4D) started wanting to hold my left hand, while waiting for my right hand to feed him. Suddenly, an idea came to me. I said, " J, feed mommy" and hand him the fork. To my great surprise, he was happily feeding me his pasta with the fork and very neatly - no mess. Then he got hungry and he started feeding himself!!!

I had not tried giving him fork, and thus, the fact that he can use it, seems to indicate to me that children will be ready, when they are ready, don't need to spend too much energy to teach and train earlier than when they are ready.

The next strategy I took was to only put 5 pieces of pasta on his bowl and re-fill it each time he finished. I re-fill with 3 pieces at a time, and counted one, two, three in Mandarin as we go along.

This lasted through the whole dinner, and until the last pasta was left. The next day dinner, I served the same pasta again, and again this whole self-feeding repeats itself. On the next day, J asked me for pasta and for the fork himself. Hurray! To my delight, he mastered his counting one, two, three in Mandarin at the end of dinner. Two big achievements today, again shortly after he turned two years old.

J went on to continue self-feeding each evening and it has been 3 consecutive day now. I hope to maintain it.

Language Development

While playing the Montessori beans pouring game (10.3.2011), I discovered the Mandarin words that J (24M5D) now knows, " hai you, mei you le, hai yao, etc." meaning there are more, there are no more already, all empty, I still want to play. While counting the spilled beans, J counted them by himself, "yi, er, san, si" meaning one, two, three, four beans. But he stopped there. Thus, it gave me clue that my next Mandarin lesson will concentrate on the number 4 and 5 :-)

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